One year after Newtown, Congress still stalled on gun control

By Lindsey Boerma

December 14, 2013 / 7:02 AM
/ CBS News

Not a single federal law
curbing gun violence has passed in the year since a young man from
Newtown, Conn., who'd long exhibited signs of mental instability, got a hold of his mother's AR-15-style Bushmaster rifle and two of her
handguns and gunned down 20 first-graders and six of their educators at
Sandy Hook Elementary School before taking his own life.

Six months after the Dec. 14, 2012 tragedy, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., insisted the push
for tougher gun laws and bolstered support for mental health in America
was "still on the front burner." But foundation for that statement was
flimsy.

Manchin's own amendment to strengthen background checks for gun
purchases - co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and seen by many in
Congress to be the most realistic hope for immediate reform to gun laws -
had collapsed in the Senate two months earlier. Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid, D-Nev., had "hit pause" on debate over firearms altogether,
pulling the legislation from the floor indefinitely.

Sandy Hook victims and officials ask outsiders to keep out on anniversaryLike most action rallied in the wake of tragedy, the mindset starting
out is, "let's get the legislation, get it now - and then it fades,"
Bill Sherlach, the husband of Sandy Hook's school psychologist who was
killed, told "CBS Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley in April. "Time goes by. New cycles happen. Other headlines come up."

"We can't wait for D.C. to pass laws," Nicole Hockley, whose
six-year-old son Dylan was killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook
Elementary School, said in a separate interview
with Pelley last month. She said she learned an important lesson the
day the Senate voted down the Manchin-Toomey amendment: "It's not about
legislation... it's about us, as a people and as parents, forming these
solutions within our own communities and moving forward."

Hockley, who's been actively involved with Sandy Hook Promise - a
nonprofit formed by Newtown community members to drum up awareness of
the causes of gun violence - said most important to her is reining in
gun trafficking; Sherlach named limiting magazine capacity. Both those
initiatives were part of the ambitious package of proposals the
president rolled out in January, but neither saw daylight at the federal
level. Advocates for gun control began looking to states as a vehicle for reform.

"When Congress failed to pass any new gun violence prevention
legislation in 2013, including the overwhelmingly popular legislation to
expand background checks, state legislatures answered the call," said a
report out this week from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
"Twenty-one states enacted new laws to curb gun violence in their
communities, with eight of these states passing major reforms."

"I am encouraged that, since Sandy Hook, five states... have imposed
or strengthened bans on assault weapons or large-capacity ammunition
magazines," she wrote. "Polls consistently show public support for
banning the sale and manufacture of assault weapons--the law of the land
between 1994 and 2004--and support from a cross section of police
chiefs, mayors, clergy, medical professionals and educators."

The issue, Brady Campaign President Dan Gross wrote to CBS News in an
email, "is Congress, and the disconnect between what the American
public wants and supports and what Congress is doing about it. ...I can
guarantee you every senator who voted 'no' [on the Manchin-Toomey
background check amendment] voted against what the majority of their
constituents support."

A CBS News poll out this week
revealed that support for stricter gun laws has dipped from 57 to 49
percent since the immediate aftermath of the shooting. But 85 percent of
Americans back a federal law requiring background checks on all
potential gun buyers.

Citing that 85 percent, Reid said Friday on the Senate floor Friday
that debate about the background check amendment is "not over": "It's
going to happen; it's only a question of when it happens," he said. "We
won't give up on the victims of 26 school shootings that have occurred
since the Newtown mass murder."

Newtown shooting report details Lanza's obsessionEarlier this week while meeting with Newtown family members, Vice President Joe Biden offered more concrete action,
promising $100 million in federal funding that will go toward
increasing the quality of mental health care in the United States. The release of a prosecutor's report last month
revealed the shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, as a disturbed man who
blacked out his bedroom window with garbage bags and kept spreadsheets
of mass murders.

Gross said the Brady Campaign is "strongly in favor of improving our
mental health systems," but worries the pro-gun lobby "wants us to have
that conversation without talking about the very real things we can do
to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally
ill, like extending background checks to online and gun show sales.

"...We support a conversation about mental health access," he wrote,
"but we will not let it occur at the expense of talking about the
sensible, lifesaving gun reforms that 90 percent of the American public
supports."

Meanwhile, as Dec. 14, 2013 comes and goes, Hockley told the Washington Post,
it's "just another day for us... we live with that loss every single
day." And she'll continue to fight to make sure that loss wasn't in
vain.

"For us it's all about making change happen and making something
positive come from this," she said. "If it was just a senseless tragedy,
I don't know if I could live with that."